Translations

By and large, there was little work needed to translate Harry's units into equivalents for use with WAB. The only real issue resulted from the shortage of figures which had caused me to halve (more or less) all the infantry units on both sides. Since Harry's rules don't count noses and the relative frontages were maintained as was the proportion of army frontage to deployment area, any distortion was minimal. For the Persians, 24 man units were fine but for the Greeks, 12 man units just wouldn't work. I decided to double up 8 of the units to make 4 x 24 man phalanxes and make 2 18 man units of the remaining 3. To make the comparison between rules as valid as possible, I wanted to keep the same orders of battle and the same battle plan for each side. How the execution fared would then be largely a matter of rules and dice.

The next task then was to define the units in WAB terms, I decided to stick with how the figures looked crossed with the list and adjust when necessary for consistancy between the games. Since the original made no mention of shield barriors, I left them out and counted the spara as ordinary shields. I was also at a loss for the extra commanders since the original WAB lists didn't have extra characters. Making up stats would not have taken much effort but I decided to just skip them. If Friday's planned game comes through I will probably add them. I did make 2 special rules, to reflect the Athenians running charge, I allowed the hoplites to "march" even if there were enemy units within 8" and I decided to allow them to keep their phalanx benefits even if they fell below 16 figures (ok to be honest I forgot about it in the heat of battle)!

So this gave me the following:
The Persians fielded:

General in chariot
2 x 24 Immortals with light armour, shield, bow, spear and shield
1 x 24 Persians with bow, spear and shield
1x 24 Saka with bow, shield and hand weapons
1 x24 Carian spearman with light armour, shield and spear. (I briefly thought about counting these as hoplites but had used the Persian stats for them in the first game so did the same for consistancy)
4x12 Archers, (Scythian, Ethiopean, Arab but treated as Persiasn for the day not levies)
4x24 Anatolians, Levy Light Infantry with javelin, spear and shield.
3 units of levy skirmishers, 1 each of bow, sling& shield and javelein & shield
2 units of Persian Cavalry, 1 with shield and throwing spear, one with light armour and throwing spear. (normally these have javelins but since the orbat says they have no missile weapons, I swapped them)
1 unit of Skythians: Levy skirmish cavalry with bow

The whole came to 19 units totalling 252 figures and 3,853 points
All close order units had standards and muscians

The Greeks fielded:

Hoplite General
4 x 24 Hoplites, heavy armour, large shield, spear, phalanx
2 x 18 Hoplites, heavy armour, large shield, spear, phalanx
3 x 12 skirmishers, with sling or javelin, 2 of which had bucklers as well.

This came to 11 units, 157 figures and 2092.

The ratio of figures was close enough to the historical but the point totals indicate that the Persians should have a major advantage, confirming my believe that most if not all point sytems are useless for game balance. Of course, the game might prove me wrong and be a walk over for the Persians which would at least match historical expectations.